After several decades of research on message framing, there is still no clear and consistent answer to the question of when emphasizing positive or negative outcomes in a persuasive message will be most effective. Whereas early framing research considered the type of recommended behavior (health-affirming vs. illness-detection) to be the determining factor, more recent research has looked to individual differences to answer this question. In this paper, we incorporate both approaches under a single framework. The framework describes the multiple self-regulatory levels at which a message can be framed and predicts when framing at each level will be most effective. Two central predictions were confirmed across four studies: (1) messages describing the pleasures of adhering to the recommended behavior are most effective for recipients in a promotion focus (who are concerned with meeting growth needs), whereas messages describing the pains of not adhering are most effective for recipients in a prevention focus (who are concerned with meeting safety needs), and (2) the content of an advocacy message is essential, as different topics induce different regulatory orientations. By showing that different message content can induce a promotion or prevention focus, past findings and theories can be accommodated within the proposed framework, and a single set of self-regulatory principles can be used to understand message framing.Keywords: message framing, gain/loss framing, regulatory focus, social influence, health (Skymall, 2009). At some level, it is clear that both advertisements are using the same approach to persuade potential buyers: "If you use our product, an outcome you want will be yours." At another level, however, it is equally apparent that the advertisements feel quite different from one another. Whereas the LaserComb can lift the weight of your miserable existence, the Laser Orb will make possible the joy of running your fingers through a thick head of hair once again.When will describing an advocated behavior in different ways influence message effectiveness? Beyond helping advertisers sell expensive and no doubt powerful hair growth products, this question of message framing has important theoretical implications. By message framing, we refer specifically to framing the outcomes of an advocated behavior in terms of either the benefits afforded by adopting the recommendation or the costs associated with failing to adopt it (i.e., what is often called "gain/loss" framing). Consistent with the theoretical and practical importance of this topic, research on message framing has been a fixture of the persuasion literature for over three decades. In a highly influential paper, Rothman and Salovey (1997) advocated prospect theory as framework for predicting when different frames would be most effective as a function of the behavior itself (i.e., whether the behavior had certain or uncertain outcomes; see also Rothman, Martino, Bedell, Detweiler, & Salovey, 1999). More recently, the focus has been on ident...